At Purdue University scientists have developed a new imaging technique that is able to evaluate the chemical composition of tissues in vivo, something that has previously been possible only with samples in a Petri dish. Laboratory approaches have involved spectroscopy, but living tissue scatters light too drastically to make any sense of it. The new imaging technique sends out individual photons at the target tissue, each uniquely energized at a specific frequency. A single photodiode detector is then used to capture the returning signal which holds information about the tissue it’s coming from.
The spectrometer-free vibrational imaging by retrieving stimulated Raman signal, as the technique is called, was used to study vitamin E composition within the skin of laboratory mice, as well as analyze breast cancer tissue in-situ.
From the study in Science Advances:
Compared to the spectrometer setting, our method improved the photon collection efficiency by two orders of magnitude for highly scattering specimens.
he reported work opens new opportunities for spectroscopic imaging in a surgical room and for development of deep-tissue Raman spectroscopy toward molecular level diagnosis.
Study in Science Advances: Spectrometer-free vibrational imaging by retrieving stimulated Raman signal from highly scattered photons…
Source: Purdue…
